5. Miscellaneous

This section describes other items of note for the
X11R7.1 release.

5.1. Legacy keyboard driver phase-out

The legacy keyboard driver is no longer compiled into the X server by
default on certain platforms (including Linux). The newer kbd
driver replaces the older built-in driver. It is suggested that, if the
X server says that it cannot load the keyboard driver, then the
xorg.conf file should be updated to use the new kbd
driver, which can be done by changing the Driver line in the
InputDevice section. For example,

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Note that the driver name is case-sensitive.

5.2. Socket directory ownership and permissions

The socket directories created in /tmp are now required to be
owned by root and have their sticky-bit set. If the permissions are not
set correctly, the component using this directory will print an error
message and fail to start. Common socket directories that are known to
be affected include:

/tmp/.font-unix
/tmp/.ICE-unix
/tmp/.X11-unix

These directories are used by the font server, xfs,
applications using the Inter-Client Exchange protocol (ICE) and the X
server, respectively.

There are several solutions to the problem of when to create these
directories. They could be created at install time by the system's
installer if the /tmp dir is persistent. They could be created
at boot time by the system's boot scripts (e.g., the init.d
scripts). Or, they could be created by PAM modules at service startup
or user login time.

The solution chosen is platform dependent, and the system administrator
should be able to handle creating those directories on any systems that
do not have the correct ownership or permissions.

5.3. Composite exposes extra visuals

When the Composite extension is enabled via xorg.conf or the
command line, a new visual is created. This visual is different from
the other visuals used by X applications in that it includes an alpha
component. It is used by the compositing manager and other Composite
aware applications.

Most X applications ignore this visual since it is not useful to them;
however some applications mistakenly try to use it, which will cause
them to fail. An environment variable, XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS,
was added to the X11 library to hide this visual from applications that
mistakenly try to use it. If an application fails only when the
Composite is enabled, try setting this environment variable before
starting the application.

Since Composite is not enabled by default, it is not expected that this
issue will be visible to most users.